


Four Lives That Totally Happened (But Sucked) and One That Also Happened (And Rocked)

by Emma_Oz



Category: The A-Team (TV), The A-Team - All Media Types
Genre: 4 things + 1 thing, AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 04:01:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17297375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emma_Oz/pseuds/Emma_Oz
Summary: Like the title says, it's a series of AUs.





	Four Lives That Totally Happened (But Sucked) and One That Also Happened (And Rocked)

One  
If Hannibal had zigged instead of zagged when charging up a numbered hill as a green lieutenant in Korea, if a bullet had been two inches lower and slightly to the left, if he had died before he got a chance to command… the war in Vietnam would have been very different for the men who never met him.

Without Hannibal there was no A team and no jazz, but also no Hanoi bank job and no life on the run.

BA served most of his tour at the Denang motorpool, before a dishonourable discharge for punching a lieutenant weang a Confederate flag in the face. On discharge he returned to Chicago and settled down to life as a mechanic, a husband and a father. 

Face got through the war as best he could. Without the team, his scamming was directed to petty ends – he was the man who could get a fellow soldier a three day pass, contraband, booze, girls, drugs. After the war, he dealt mostly in heroin.

He did make one friend during the war, a crazy pilot. He even visited him at the VA after the war, sporadically, when his fortunes allowed it. Murdock was always there – he had not much else to look forward to. 

 

Two  
If Murdock had followed through on the temptation to throw a noose over the beam in his Gramp’s barn, if he’d tried to silence the voices, he’d have started down a long road where he ended up staring at the walls of the State sanitorium. Not moving, not blinking, just listening.

Without Murdock, Hannibal and his team died at a hot LZ. They perished in the wet heat, calling for help that did not come

 

Three  
If BA had been shot during the ‘68 riots in his hometown, his injury would have kept him out of the army and left him an angry man. 

Without BA’s impatient reliability, the team led by Hannibal was good but not great. Their team worked effectively, much more so than any other unit in the demoralised US army in 1970, but not well enough to spark Morrison’s dream of a raid on the Bank of Hanoi.

They made it through their tour and then quit the army. Even, Hannibal, who was tired of his inability to protect his men.

Face went into advertising, took to it like a duck to water. He lived the high life, with a new woman on his arm every few months and a wife who looked the other way.

Hannibal spent some time quietly advising the Vietnam Veterans against the War on strategy. He masterminded Operation Dewey Canyon III, one of the most effective acts to end the war. And, behind the scenes, he organised the Winter Soldier investigation.

Once Hannibal left the army, Murdock was coopted to black ops for the CIA and what he saw in their service sent him comprehensively over the brink. His copter went down on a mission over Cambodia and his body was never retrieved.

 

Four  
If Face had married Lesley, if she had felt called to be a Catholic mother instead of a nun, if his heart hadn’t been broken, then Templeton would never have signed up. He would have settled down happily into the family life he coveted.

Templeton was a good dad and a great provider,  
working as an accountant whose inquiring mind and charming ways allowed him to squeeze his clients through the loopholes of the tax code. He was perhaps not the most constant of husbands, but he never pushed things in a way that threatened his white picket fence life.

Without Face, Hannibal’s team in Vietnam never reached the depths of craziness that made them truly great. Hannibal led his team through the war and after peace was declared dedicated years of his life to transforming the disheartened military. He was resolute in his commitment to creating a better, post-draft army.

BA, on the other hand, could barely want to leave the army behind him. He acquired a half share in a repair shop where he could fix almost anything. A steady stream of kids dropped by the shop to receive gruff instructions on how to fix their radios. He met his wife when her nephew brought in a broken TV and BA helped return it to their tenement.

Murdock flew choppers sometimes and went in and out of the VA. More in than out as the years passed.

 

(And One That Rocked)  
In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum-security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune.... The A-Team.

**Author's Note:**

> BA attacking someone carrying a Confederate flag – Ken Burns’ excellent documentary includes interviews with soldiers pointing out that there were guys with Confederate flags near the rear, but at the front anyone who was offended by that was carrying a rifle.
> 
> Face’s drug dealing - According to Ken Burns, drugs were readily available in Vietnam.
> 
> BA’s injury – After Martin Luther King’s death in 1968 there were riots in over 100 cities. In Chicago, after the 48 hours of rioting there were 11 dead, 48 wounded by Police and over 2,150 people arrested.
> 
> Hannibal’s work - The Winter Soldier Investigation was organised by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) in 1971, intended to publicise war crimes and atrocities by the United States Armed Forces and their allies in the Vietnam War. 
> 
> Dewey Canyon III was a peaceful anti-war protest organized by Vietnam Veterans against the War and included returned veterans dramatically flinging their service decorations back to the White House, throwing them over a wall erected between the protestors and the White House.


End file.
